Jean Piaget Quotes

The strangest thing about the low quality of Internet argument is that effective argument isn't really so difficult. Sure, not everyone can be Clarence Darrow, but anyone who wants to be at least competent at argument can do it.

I am a linear thinker in a lot of ways.

While driving to work, I'll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.

I have a very linear mind.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

I mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented... I feel I am blundering in concepts too fine for me.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

The times call for clear, lucid thinking rather than Clare Luceish thought.

[Commenting on Ronald Reagan:] I don't think he ever thought anything through.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

I am never satisfied until I can make a mathematical model of what I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand. If I cannot, I do not understand.

When you're writing criticism or thinking critically, to draw a very limited minor conclusion from solid evidence is really not thinking.

I am attracted to arguments that have a certain plausible originality to them.

Logical reasoning is an argument which we have with ourselves and which reproduces internally the features of a real argument.

Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.

My brain kind of works in steps. I have to go through things and then process them and then write about them. I have to understand them first.

I have come to this conclusion: if 'sentimentality' is lazy emotion, then the term itself is lazy criticism.

I enjoy a good reasoned argument. I love the power of logic.